Further out, at anchor, lay the big ships: the Kherson, the Caucasus, the various ships from other countries.
Among the barges moored to the quay I found the Shilka. It looked rather small. Had it really come all the way from Vladivostok? Across the Indian Ocean?
There wasn’t a soul on board, nor was there any smoke coming out of its funnel…
Well, I thought, there’s still plenty of time before eight o’clock.
After memorizing the location, I went back to the hotel.
I tried to telephone my friends, but the line was dead.
I tracked down the young messenger boy, and together we pulled my luggage down the stairs.
“Do you think I’ll be able to find a cab?”
“A cab? Well, er… If you want a cab, you must flag one down by the quay. You won’t find no cabs round here.”
We agreed that he would go down to the quay and order a cab to pick me up around seven. It was better to get there early. I didn’t want to make my friends anxious.
I went back up to my room.
There was something hopeless about these empty corridors, these gaping doors, these floors strewn with scraps of paper and pieces of string that no one was sweeping up.
A whirlwind had passed through the hotel, leaving only dust and litter….
I sat down in a chair by the window, wanting to gather my thoughts, to look quietly inside myself and think things over.
My eye was caught by my little cypress-wood cross, tied to the headboard of the bed. It was from the Solovetsky monastery, which I had visited a few years before this.[93] I was always forgetting it, then remembering it at the last moment and taking it with me. And it had become a kind of symbol for me… though that’s not something I want to talk about.
I untied my cross. A simple cross, carved from wood, it was the kind one places on the breast of the deceased. My thoughts went back to the Solovki islands, to the melancholy, sudden cries of the seagulls and the eternal wind—the cold, salty wind gnawing away at the scrawny branches of the pine trees. And the novices’ gaunt faces, pale locks of hair poking out from beneath shabby skullcaps. Severe northern faces. Like icons.
An elderly monk at a tiny church deep in the forest. On the church walls were all seven of the archangels. Michael with a sword; Raphael with a censer; Barachiel the gardener of Paradise, with roses in his hands;[94] Gabriel, the angel of the Annunciation, with a stem of lilies; Jehudiel the avenger, with his whips; Selatiel, the angel of prayer, hands crossed over his chest; and Uriel, the mournful angel of death, holding a candle the wrong way up, its flame pointing down.
“Your saints are all angels, father?”
The little old man blinked, not understanding, not hearing. “Where? Where?”
Then the lines of his wrinkled face radiated out into a smile.
“Holy angels, my dear, holy angels!”
In the little monastery shop were crosses, prayer ropes, woven prayer belts.[95]
A gaunt, weathered-looking old woman, with round hawk-like eyes and an air of foreboding, was rummaging through the belts.
“Death, father, give us everything we need for death. Last rites for all t’ family, we be nine. We Orthodox must prepare, Father. It be war and more war. Then, who knows?”
There was indeed no knowing. I chose a small cross made of cypress wood….
Ever since then I had kept it with me, hanging it at the head of my bed. During black and sleepless nights I had buried a great deal beneath this small cross.[96]
There was a knock at the door.
Without waiting for an answer, in rushed P—a minor public figure. His hair was disheveled, his beard all askew, as if from the wind, and one eye slightly swollen.
“Oh, the struggle it’s been to get here!” he cried out. He seemed confused; he was looking straight past me. “Shooting on one side, and all cordoned off on the other… I only just managed to slip through.”
“How very good of you to think of me at a time like this.”
“How could I not think of you? You were the first person who came to mind! You’re sure to be able to help. You know everyone, everyone who matters—you’re famous. We’re in a terrible situation—we’ve been let down badly. S promised to get us all onto a steamer for Constantinople. He swore the French would let us on board and told us to go and collect our passes at eleven o’clock this morning. So along we go. And then there we sit, waiting like idiots in front of the locked doors of the French consulate—until finally, at three o’clock, a secretary comes into the courtyard and professes total astonishment at our presence. Monsieur S, apparently, had found it necessary to depart at eight o’clock this morning and had left no further instructions. Well, what do you make of that? Now you’re our only hope.”
“But what can I do?”
“What do you think? Make some arrangements for us. Have a word with people on the Caucasus and explain our situation to them. After all, they’ll all know who you are.”
“First, I don’t even have a pass for myself. K has promised to take me with his family on the Shilka. If it weren’t for him, I’d be staying here in Odessa—”
“I don’t believe it! You, whom the whole of Russia… Bligken & Robinson named one of their caramels after you. ‘Teffi’ caramels. I’ve eaten them myself. And that you, of all people—”
“My caramels are neither here nor there. If it weren’t for K, I’d be—”
“In that case we’ll go on the Shilka with you,” P resolved. “You must get us on board. After all, we’re hardly nobodies. Russia, at this historical moment, owes us something. Listen—I’m going to go and look into one or two other possibilities. If they don’t work out, then you must get us onto the Shilka. It’s your civic duty. History will be your judge. Give me your hand—I place my trust in you.”
I could hardly believe my ears.
He threw open the door, banged his forehead on the lintel, and rushed out. But a second later the door flew open again.
“I assume you have foreign currency with you?”
“No, none at all.”
“Dear oh dear oh dear! How on earth? How can you be so improvident? Really, madame, it’s as if you’ve been living on the moon, entirely unaware of the historical moment and failing to consider your options.”
He thought for a moment, then added severely, “What if we do end up having to go abroad? Where am I going to get hold of foreign currency now?”
And with that he left, evidently disappointed with me.
It was getting dark—time to go down to the harbor.
My young friend was waiting for me downstairs. He had arranged for a horse-drawn cab to come and pick me up at seven, for an unimaginably steep price.
The boy suggested I have some supper.
“Cook’s still here—and two waiters. They’ll put something together for you.”
But I didn’t feel like eating.
I went outside and listened. People seemed to be shooting haphazardly, in one quarter and then in another, just for the hell of it, to send us on our way, like a peasant boy tossing a stick after a gentleman’s carriage.
Everyone was on guard. Everywhere was a groundswell of tension—ripples and echoes from a storm that was raging more fiercely elsewhere.
The boy was standing by the entrance and beckoning to me. The promised cab had arrived.
We drive down to the waterfront.
Silence…
We locate the Shilka.
The boat is deserted. Not a single light. The entire shore is deserted.
93
Founded in 1436 on an archipelago in the White Sea, the Solovetsky monastery was for many centuries the most important monastery in northern Russia. In 1923 the Soviet authorities turned it into a special prison and labor camp—the prototype for the vast system later known as the Gulag. Teffi visited the monastery in summer 1916 (Haber, chapter 6).
94
Known as the Angel of Blessings, Barachiel is often portrayed holding a white rose against his chest, or with rose petals scattered on his cloak; the petals symbolize the blessings he bestows.
95
Prayer belts are wide belts with the words of prayers woven into them, intended to be worn or to be hung on the wall.
96
The True Cross was thought to have been made of pine, cedar, and cypress; more generally, cypress is one of the oldest symbols of mourning. The Solovki monastery and the Pechersk Lavra, the cave monastery in Kiev to which Teffi says goodbye in chapter 12, were the two most important of all Russian Orthodox pilgrimage sites. That Teffi tells us about devotional objects from each site is significant; the tiny icon in a bottle from the Lavra and this cypress cross are almost the only personal possessions she describes in